EU Court: Pirate Bay Liable for Copyright Infringement

The Pirate Bay website, a well-known repository for file sharing torrents, could be held liable for copyright infringements, the European Court of Justice ruled this week.

The decision, part of a case that dates back to 2010, is notable because the Pirate Bay serves as a directory of torrents, rather than hosting illegally-shared files itself. European Union copyright laws pertain to any entity that makes communication with the public, and the court ruled that the Pirate Bay falls into this category, the BBC reported.

"The making available and management of an online sharing platform must be considered to be an act of communication for the purposes of the [copyright] directive," the court's ruling stated.

European file sharers already have restricted access to the Pirate Bay, thanks to the many internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK and elsewhere that block it, according to the BBC. But the ruling could have a chilling effect on lesser-known and more widely-available torrent directory sites.

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It could even affect big video sharing platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, since their users frequently upload pirated content. Those sites have typically escaped liability for copyright violations by disavowing responsibility for their users' actions and providing mechanisms for copyright owners to report piracy.

"In the ruling, the Court has in fact attributed, for the first time, secondary liability to sharing platforms due to the violation of copyrights carried out by the users of a platform," copyright lawyer Fulvio Sarzana told TorrentFreak.

The ruling certainly won't mean the end of pirated content, however, especially pirated versions of movies and TV shows. To see what pirates are watching this week, check out TorrentFreak's most pirated movies list.